Certain generally thin food products, such as crackers, cookies and the like, can be provided in packages. The packages may be for single-use consumption, where the contents of the package are consumed at one time. The packages may include multiple compartments, such as one for the food product or products and one for a condiment. Such packages may have one thin food product, or may include multiple thin food products. If multiple thin food products are provided in a package, they often times are stacked on top of each other.
The thin food products may be removed from a stack of thin food products prior to their placement into the packages. When a food product is removed from the bottom of the stack of food products, the removed food product typically slides against the next food product in the stack. Due to the weight of the stack, the amount of force required to remove the bottom food product can be increased due to the weight of the remaining food products in the stack pressing down on the bottom food product of the stack. The increased force required to remove or slide the bottom food product from the stack can cause the bottom food product to break, such as due to the impact between a pushing device and the bottom food product. Breakage of the food products can undesirably lead to rejection of the package containing the broken food product. The pieces of the broken food product may not even be properly inserted into a package. If a piece of the broken food product is not inserted in a package, it can lead to stoppage of the packaging assembly line, and thus reduce the efficiency and speed at which the assembly line can package the food products.
In addition, the weight of the stack can cause the food products to be deformed or otherwise marred. In the case of a cracker, the sliding of the bottom food product from the stack of food products in combination with the weight of the stack can cause the upper surface of the food product to break or crumble. Salt or other toppings can also be scrapped from the food products, resulting in less than desirable food products. Crumbled portions and/or toppings, such as salt, of the food products that are removed due to the sliding against the stack of food products and against components of the equipment can accumulate. If too much accumulates, then the crumbles or toppings can interfere with moving parts of the packaging assembly line, a well as lead to an undesirable appearance if some end up in the packaging.
One type of packaging assembly line for placing multiple food products, such as crackers, into individual packages, utilizes multiple conveyor assemblies. Each conveyor assembly has receiving plates for the food products linked in a conveyor belt-like arrangement. Each of the receiving places receives one of the crackers from the stack of crackers. As each receiving plate is tilted as it rounds the conveyor belt-like assembly, the cracker drops into an aligned package. However, this type of packaging assembly line has several disadvantages. For example, if more than one cracker is to be stacked in an individual package, each cracker is dropped from a separate conveyor assembly into the individual package. This can lead to complexities with indexing the packages for each conveyor assembly, increase the time required for filling a package with a stack of crackers, and can lead to compounding of rejects when one of the conveyor assemblies is malfunctioning. The dropping of the cracker from the receiving plate into the package requires a certain minimum drop height, which is a function of the size of the conveyor assembly and the receiving plates. If that drop height is too large, the impact of the cracker in the package can lead to an increased rate of cracker breakage. Yet another disadvantage of such packaging assembly lines is that the cracker ends up in the container in an inverted orientation from that in the stack. If the stack has crackers that are right-side-up, then the package will have such crackers upside-down. This can result in packages that are less visually appealing.